A poem for two voices

Voice 1                                      Voice 2

I like to blow bubbles.

                                               I'll never stop.

I like to blow bubbles.

                                               and watch them pop.



     Writing poems with more than one voice, with dialog or for two voices is fun.  Wouldn't you like to try one too?  It doesn't have to be long.  as you can see, my poem only has four lines, or one rhyming couplet. 
Enjoy.  Maybe you'd like to try blowing bubbles while you write your poem.

Tucson, May 2012

Desert radiates heat
sand blows
foothills haze
a lizard crawls
across my path
five orange tarantula hawks
fly past my window.

      A tarantula hawk is a member of the ant, bee, wasp family.  This wasp stings a tarantula and lays eggs on the body so the young can have something to eat when they hatch.  The zooming orange color is really quite pretty to see flying.

Grace Anna

Shopping in the grocery store

with her dad

 four year-old

precious, pink princess

Grace Anna

practices her rhymes.

Laughs at

think pink,

glad Dad,

Grace Anna Banana,

Bet us lettuce

and dandy candy.

These are the divine rhymes

of regal Grace Anna.

This is how the poem begins.


     Happy Saturday.  Let the holiday begin.  Make this a grand weekend for poetry for you.  Find a poem you want to read.  Find a poem you must write.  Enjoy yourself.

Too Much Watermelon

Once there was a mean old felon

Who stole our ripe watermelon.

He said it had zing.

He ate the whole thing.

Now he is achy-bellowin'.

     This form poem is a limerick.  I made up that last word.  Can you guess the meaning? It is a play/reversal on bellyaching.  I like making up words and discovering new ones.  Do you?  When I was in school I used to get into a lot of trouble for this behavior.  My papers often would be returned with red ink marking them and a note from my teacher, "This isn't a word."  Perhaps this is why I am a poet, so I can make up words.  It is also probably why I love dictionaries.  Here is today's challenge.  Make up your own word and leave it and its definition in the comments section below.  Today is the birthday of my birthday poet Theodore Roethke.  He's probably most famous for his poem MY PAPA'S WALTZ.  But he wrote a lot of other great poems too.  I love the line a congress of stinks, from THE ROOT CELLAR.  and try reading NIGHT CROW, to see if you get the same eerie feeling I do every time I read that poem.  I look at Roethke's line breaks, his word choice and I'm still wondering how he gets me to the point I'm at when I reach the end of the poem. (Sorry, You'll have to page down to find NIGHT CROW but there is an audio version too.)   So I'm off to have fun playing with words, hope you have a fun day too.

Silly Rhyme

A plumed cockatoo

perched high in bamboo

caused quite a to do

by squawking yoo-hoo, yoo-hoo,

to each gnu and caribou

that she saw pass

below in the grass.

     Do you ever have days when you just feel like being silly?  That's how I feel today.  I don't even know where this poem came from. It probably isn't fair to call this a poem, just the beginnings of one, that I'll probably want to play with more later.   I do know that these words jumbled into my mouth and it felt pretty good to tickle around with them.  They set up a rhythm that had my feet marching and I had a hard time getting out.  So I invite you to be silly today too.  Find some words that you like the feel of in your mouth and see what comes out. Just play with the words and have fun.  You might want to grab a rhyming dictionary and find a random page that appeals to your mouth or eyes and see what happens.  I own 6 different rhyming dictionaries and some days I just like reading these books.  I hope you have a day filled reading, writing and laughter.

SWIMMING

Let's go swimming.

Do you want to come?

We can splash

in the pool

and have a lot of fun.

We can touch the bottom

and swim side to side.

We can kick and splash.

We can float and glide.

So if we need to cool off,

Let's head for the pool.

We'll play Marco Polo

and follow all the rules.

   Do you like to swim?  In Tucson it was 106 again today, so I really like to swim to cool off.  The water is in the 80's. This makes for a really nice swim.  When I was young, I took Red Cross swimming lessons from the time I was very young. 
    My son took baby swimming lessons and won badges for back stroke and 25 and 50 meter swimming when he was 4. (We were living in England then.)  He joined a summer swim team when he was 5 and won lots of ribbons.  He became a life guard in high school and taught swimming to young children.  He still loves to swim.
    Can you write your own poem about swimming today?  Or how about one about water.

A Bear Comes to Tea.

If a bear comes to a tea party

he'll want to eat

extremely hearty.

He'll nosh on salmon,

shrimp and trout,

and will not leave

when you want him out.

     I'm still playing with the tea party.  When I first drafted this poem, I had, " trout, salmon and shrimp."  I just couldn't get a good rhyme for shrimp.  So I had to change the line and order for the fish.  I tried ending the line with "shrimp, too" so I could rhyme with "too." but that sent the poem into a dead end also.  Today, instead of writing a poem, can you read to find poem with an end rhyme that you think is elegant (clever)?  If you find one you especially like will you share it with me in the comments.please?